This is a wonderful website. Don’t know why it has taken me so long to find it. I feel like I need to take off work for a week just to read everything. I have a 13 yr old son who has bipolar disorder and ADHD. After two great years (7th & most of 8th), he was in a fight with another boy at school and the principal is recommending explusion. One step forward and two steps backwards. Just when I thought everything was going to be okay. Needless to say they are not going to expel. Thanks so much for this site. I look forward to talking with others.
Whenever I hear Bipolar and ADHD mentioned together, I get nervous. Part of the reason for this site is so that we can all share our experiences. My son was “officially” diagnosed with ADHD when he was 7, but “unofficially” when he was 3 (as soon as he started pre-school). His paternal grandmother, and paternal great-grandmother have all been diagnosed with Manic-Depressive illness. I always swore my ex suffered from it as well (as a Child Psych major in college I thought I knew it all!), but when my son was going through the evaluation 2 years ago, the Child Psych asked for copies of mine, and my ex’s report cards from grade school (the ones where teachers make comments). When she read all of his, she explained that she was “pretty positive” that my ex had ADHD. She explained very thoroughly that ADHD has been very misdiagnosed in the past for Bipolar disorder. My ex mother-in-law has a habit of taking one child to a birthday party, going grocery dhopping with the other child, and then not arriving to pick the child up from the party until 30 minutes after it ended because she “had to finish her shopping”-I pictured it as a manic state, but looking back it was probably more of an inattentive state-she had no clue of time passing.In short, some symptoms of one can mimic symptoms of another. I know of one child my son is friends with who takes Adderall, Paxil and Ativan. I fully believe that medication was the best thing that ever happened to my son, but a 10 year old taking more meds than my 80 year old grandfather is frightening.The meds are not, however, a panacea. My son does great, I do not have a weekly phone call (or letter) about his behavior anymore. But he did bite the neighbors son once last year, and he stopped in the middle of a basketball game to scream at his coach just last week for not protesting a call. He will have problems still, but he is able to sit still and learn in school, the rest comes (hopefully) with maturity. He may have to take Adderall for the rest of his life, but I am not going to be there in college to remind him at 2am to stop partying and start studying, I won’t be there when he gets mad at his wife to stop him from hitting her, I won’t be there to keep him from yelling at his boss that he knows better.I am afraid that we have begun to expect doctors to medicate everything. I will get off my soapbox now. Good Luck ,and if you have an IEP in place, expulsion should not be an option.